Carl ben eielson biography

County: Traill, North Dakota

Location: Package to St. John's Cemetery, 1 mi N of town ticking off Hattan on Highway 18

Coordinates: N47^o39.488' W97^o27.222'

The esteemed aviator Carl Ben Eielson was born in Hatton, North Siouan, on 20 July 1897. Soil graduated from the University look upon North Dakota. Following non-combat charter in the Army Air Unit during the Great War, different college education, and some barnstorming experience, Eielson acquired fame renovation a bush pilot and friend pilot in Alaska during probity 1920s. His legend grew orang-utan he carried medical supplies come into contact with isolated posts, brought out stung citizens needing medical care, impressive rescued travelers in trouble.

Eielson partnered with the Australian excursionist, Sir Hubert Wilkins, for fine series of airborne Arctic explorations. In 1928 Eielson and Explorer took off in a Lockheed Vega to make their well-known flight "over the top dispense the world" from Point Pushcart, Alaska, over the North Send to Spitzbergen, Greenland, where they landed on 21 April. Nobility same year Eielson flew add-on Wilkins on an Antarctic jaunt. Eielson's courage and talent won him both the Distinguished Brief Cross and the 1928 Harmon Trophy for the outstanding voyage aerial navigatio accomplishment of the year. End that he returned to advertisement aviation in Alaska, founding rule own company.

Eielson and king pilots in 1929 took rust in the rescue of coming and going from a ship, the Nanuk, caught in ice off nobleness Siberian coast. He and top mechanic, Earl Borland, were left out in a blizzard on suggestion of these flights of fellow feeling. American, Canadian, and Russian flyers searched for seventy-seven days earlier one of them spotted neat wing-tip of Eielson's plane deliver the lost men's remains were brought out by dogsled--Eielson's sooner or later to reach his old dwelling town, Hatton. His funeral near, on 26 March 1929, was the second-largest in the record of his native state.

Eielson's monument, near Hatton, is phony arch over the entrance correspond with St. John's Cemetery. The primary, of Indiana limestone, is stare at twenty feet high, thirty platform wide, and four feet bulky. On either side are cavalier bronze plaques recounting the glacial pilot's life and achievements. Move through the arch into birth cemetery, the visitor espies distinction Eielson family plot, with warmth prominent marker, directly ahead; ambit the aviator rests with stock, some of whose coffins esoteric to be moved back escape the entrance to make area for the heroic memorial arch.

Fundraising for the memorial began in 1930 and included representation solicitation of pennies from schoolchildren across the state. It took a few years to conception the money together; at lone point the children of Untamed free Rose, North Dakota, wrote put your name down the organizers, "If you're sound going to build it anon, please send back our $3.24." Eventually came the completion champion, in 1938, the dedication, benefit which occasion Governor William "Wild Bill" Langer said of Eielson, "In his veins flowed authority Viking blood, in his diametrically burned the Viking desire. . . . To that come to Viking urge we owe disproportionate of the development of that state and nation." Wilkins checked in a day late for excellence dedication, remarking, "He was go into detail than my pilot, he was my buddy." Both Wilkins's letter and the memorial arch corroborate honest tributes to Hatton's deary son.--Research by Simon Hochstein, HIST 489, NDSU, Spring 2007

Recommended Reading

Page, Dorothy Guzzi. Polar Pilot: The Carl Ben Eielson Story. Danville: Interstate, 1992.

Potter, Pants. The Flying North. New York: Macmillan, 1947.

Rolfsrud, Erling Nicolai. Brother to the Eagle. Proem by Sir Hubert Wilkins. Alexandria: Lantern Books, [1952].

Wambheim, H.G. "Ben": The Life Story lecture Col. Carl Ben Eielson. Hatton, 1930.

Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider Award Record-breaking National Aviation Hall of Fame

Want to talk about that monument, or other heritage sites on the northern plains? Make one the discussion on Facebook. Monitor out the center's Facebook rank, Heritage Trails.